by Eric Brown

ARE YOU WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ABOUT YOU
It is fascinating to chat with business owners across
the nation about their brand. Every business is a brand, even if a bad
one. Your brand is
not what you think it is, it is what your customer thinks it
is, it is what your employees think it is and it is what your vendors
think it is. Lots of companies clamor that their employees are their
number one asset, yet are you ready to hand over your brand, what you
tout in your marketing material, to your employees? Are you ready to
hand your brand over to your vendors? But the group with the most
influence are your customers. If they were designing your brochure,
would it have the same or similar message as the one in your lobby?

CREATE SOMETHING WORTH TALKING ABOUT

You are creating an experience for your customer at every touch
point throughout the customer life cycle. That experience, which is not
owned by you, is what your brand is. In the not so distant future, all
you will have to do is log onto Yelp, or any one of the other
commanding rating sites and you will be able to read just what your
brand is. It will certainly be much more efficient, and perhaps then,
we may all choose to actually listen to our customer long enough to be
aware of what we are portraying everyday by our actions and behavior.
 
CREATE A REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE
What are the key ingredients of a Remarkable Resident Experience?
 
Remarkable, as defined by the legend Seth Godin:
  • Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it?
  • Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the
    street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s
    easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.
Is the experience you are creating for your customer remarkable
and does your customer find value in the experience created? Are you
matching your Brand to a Targeted Experience. “Service excellence, just as with beauty, is in the eye of the beholder”!
Take some time to evaluate what will Engage and Delight your customer
based on your Brand. We were at the local Mini Cooper dealership a
while back and they openly invite customers to bring in their beloved
pets to the dealership, which some folks get excited about. It works
for Mini Cooper, but you likely would not find that at the Jaguar
showroom. Mini Cooper is matching a Customer Experience to their Brand
and this example has no correlation to luxury and doesn’t get better by
adding more money.  Southwest Airlines, you either love them or hate
them with the cattle call lines, no assigned seats, no frills. Yet true
blue Southwest customers like, enjoy, laugh with, and have a favorable experience with,
Southwest. Herb Kelleher somehow figured out how to deliver a
consistent, value driven experience, and permitted his employees to fix
it when it wasn’t.
 
What experience are you creating for your customers? Let us know your thoughts and stories here.

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Continue Reading: Who Owns Your Brand?

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